The improvements to the A56 / Davyhulme Road East junction are almost complete, and many people are blaming this work and the apparent traffic lane reduction for the ongoing traffic queues and violations. But the reality is that the queues and violations were present long before this work started.

I was really pleased to recently see the presence of the police to monitor the situation on Davyhulme Road East this week. Unfortunately, this appears to only have happened due to reports of a parent of a child at Victoria Park Junior School mounting the footway to bypass queuing traffic to get to the school. Shame it took this for the police to show an interest.

Ongoing junction improvement works at the A56 / Davyhulme Road East junction

I spent 10 minutes one day recording a video on Davyhulme Road East, starting at 9:21am, after the schools had gone in. During this brief time, I captured 7 examples of vehicles dangerously driving on the wrong side of the road.

Earlier that day, before the start of school, I saw much worse examples that I wasn’t able to record. This included one driver revving their engine at the crossing patrol, while driving on the wrong side of the road, all the way from Delamere Avenue, for about 300 metres.

I was also pleased to see Victoria Park Junior School sending letters to parents about the traffic violations, asking those who live locally to consider walking to and from school. While this is a positive step, it’s clear that not all of the dangerous driving is due to people associated with the school.

Letter sent to parents from Victoria Park Junior School

It’s also worth saying that asking people to walk to and from school is pretty futile, while the roads around the school remain dangerous and unattractive for walking. These roads need to be made safer/more pleasant to use and there needs to be additional crossing points to enable more children to walk to school.

Davyhulme Road East has two primary schools located on it and is used by many people from Stretford and Urmston to commute into Manchester by car. There are no permanent safe crossings for the schools, only a single informal crossing where the crossing patrol is.

What happens when the crossing patrol isn’t there? Kids are often starting or finishing school outside of crossing patrol times. At one point, Trafford Council were actually even trying to get rid of the crossing patrols as part of austerity measures.

While it’s good that the A56 / Davyhulme Road East junction is finally getting a pedestrian crossing (still need to see what the phases are like). This in itself isn’t enough.

We need action from Trafford Council before there’s a serious traffic incident or child fatality on Davyhulme Road East.

There needs to be a permanent safe crossing point on Davyhulme Road East for the schools and we need action to tackle the dangerous driving along here, through changes to the road layout and continued police enforcement. Do we really need to wait for something to happen for the road to be made safe?